For Stan Rampton, choosing when to wean his calves is simply a matter of pragmatism.
“From mid-August to mid-September, we’re right in the middle of harvest and just don’t have time to get them weaned,” said Rampton, who runs a cow-calf operation and a grain farm north of Oak Lake, Man.
A few years ago, Rampton switched to a later calving time of March-April because of cold weather and frozen calf ears in the January-February period.
He continues to wean his calves at six to seven months of age, because an earlier date doesn’t suit the work schedule on his mixed farm.
Read Also
VIDEO: British company Antler Bio brings epigenetics to dairy farms
British company Antler Bio is bringing epigenetics to dairy farms using blood tests help tie how management is meeting the genetic potential of the animals.
“We’ll be weaning at the end of September to mid-October, somewhere in there.”
While that’s not the most scientific method to pick a weaning time, a livestock specialist with Manitoba Agriculture says that weaning is a stressful time for calves regardless of when it happens.
“The long and short answer is that there really is no ideal time,” said John Popp of Manitoba Agriculture’s extension office in Minnedosa.
He said weaning dates have more to do with environmental conditions than simply a fixed date.
“It should depend on the amount of grass you have available. It should be based on the body condition of the cows you have out grazing and it depends on the (feed) resources you have available on the other end,” he said.
“We see a lot of producers leaving calves on too late, when there’s inadequate forage available … and the cows start to get thin.”
Weaning is stressful for calves, but Popp noted there are ways to boost the calves’ immune system prior to weaning.
That includes such basic things as providing sufficient minerals and vaccinating cattle for bovine respiratory disease.
“At weaning time, that’s the biggest thing we see is this bovine respiratory disease,” said Wayne Tomlinson, an extension veterinarian at Manitoba’s Livestock Knowledge Centre in Winnipeg.
Producers should vaccinate their calves a few weeks before weaning, Tomlinson said, and producers shouldn’t castrate, dehorn and ship calves within a short period of time.
“You don’t want to pile any of those stressors on top of themselves,” Tomlinson noted. “It’s a lot nicer if we can move those things around.”
With regard to post-vaccination, Popp said that it’s not unusual for producers to confuse a reaction to a vaccine with something more serious, like influenza or BRD.
“What a lot of producers tend to do, is they tend to mistake the reaction to the vaccine as a fever and they treat for it,” he said. “When they’re responding to a vaccine, they don’t run a fever. They’ll have a snotty nose, but they don’t have a fever.”
Another common mistake during the weaning period is not supplying the calves with adequate energy.
“Meaning, we don’t give anywhere from three to five pounds of grain (each day) … to make sure those calves have energy,” he said.
While it does take time, one way to reduce the separation stress of weaning, Popp said, is to insert a plastic tab in the calf’s nostrils.
The anti-sucking device allows mom and calf to remain together, preventing the pacing and calling out common with separation.
